Former magistrate forced out of care home because of fears staff would be
prosecuted if she attempted to end her life

An 87-year-old woman was evicted from her care home because she advocated assisted suicide and staff feared they could be prosecuted if they did not stop her.

Dorothy Brown, a former magistrate and lifelong supporter of a change in the law, was given notice to leave after carers came across a bottle of pills and an undated note and feared she could be about to make an attempt.

Mrs Brown’s family say she had kept the pills for years and was not actively planning to end her life.

But lawyers advised the home that it could open staff to prosecution if she did because they had known of her possible intention.

The case, which was raised last week in the House of Lords, exposes a major area of uncertainty over the law on assisted suicide involving the role of medical staff and carers.

Assisting a suicide can carry a jail term of up to 14 years but the current legal guidelines make clear that people who help a loved-one to die while “acting out of compassion” are unlikely to face charges.

However there is no protection for those who help in a professional capacity.

It comes ahead of a Parliamentary vote on a bill which could legalise so-called “assisted dying” – allowing doctors to prescribe a lethal dose of drugs to terminally ill patients on request.

The Coalition has signalled that it will not block the bill and the Care Minister Norman Lamb has already made clear that he would vote in favour.

Opponents fear that any relaxation of the law would create a “slippery slope” and be open to abuse, putting vulnerable elderly or disabled people at risk.

Mrs Brown, who died last year of natural causes, had been living at Dower House near Ludlow, Shropshire, for around 18 months when the issue came to a head in late 2010.

A carer noticed the bottle of pills Mrs Brown kept, leading to a search of the room during which a draft suicide note was found.

“It was undated and unsigned but prepared for a time when she would not be capable of writing such a letter,” explained her son Cameron, from Wisley, Surrey.

“They found the note and their solicitor said you’ve got to take this as evidence of her intention.

“It was pretty brutal, they just delivered a note to her in her room and she rang me up in tears saying ‘I’ve got to leave’.

“Luckily we found her another home but a rather more vulnerable older person would probably just have had to go to social services.

“Trying to get her into another home we had to hide the whole thing really, we had to just bite our lips, we just said that they had a falling out, what else could you say?

“If we explained the whole story to them, they, if they had any sense, would have gone to their solicitor who would have said ‘don’t touch her with a barge pole’.”

He emphasised that he understood the position the home was in and said the case underlined the need for a reassessment of the law.

“I was upset with them at the time but with hindsight I honestly have no argument with the care home, my argument is to do with the law,” he said.

“I understand why they did it, they had the right to do it and their solicitor told them that they would not be protected if they didn’t do it.

“But that is the effect of the law which says that if I or my brother had helped her we would not have been prosecuted but they could.”

Elizabeth Owen, the owner of the home, said that she had got on very well with Mrs Brown and her family but that the discovery of the pills and the letter had put them in an impossible position given the law.

“We were worried because it would have come back on us at the time,” she said.

“It was very sad. The advice we were given from the solicitors was to ask her to leave.